Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could stay in London and try to save fifty souls.

All honor to the comparative few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies of our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of rewards other than gold or popular favor.

These are our truly great men and women.

They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal because they give time and thought to higher things.
King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy.
His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be taken from him.

He had learned that many other things are intrinsically far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.
The "beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy and barbarism of the world," was richer far than Croesus and added more wealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds.
An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope.